He groaned softly, smoothing back Charlotte’s hair. “Don’t say that, Liv. You have Danny, your sisters and Emeline. You have Val. The connection is strong between you. He woke at your call.”

A shudder ran through Charlotte’s body when she’d lain as if dead. A block of ice in his arms. No longer shivering. Her spirit merely a faint, flickering light he’d surrounded and kept from moving down the tree of life. He whispered to her. In her mind. In her ear. Softly. Lovingly. Letting her know she wasn’t alone.

I am with you always, sielamet. Keeper of my soul. Of my heart. Where you go I will follow.

A frown flickered over her face. Her eyes moved back and forth behind her eyelids. A small shake of her head. Children. They were there in her mind, a worry that they couldn’t do without him.

I cannot survive your passing with honor, Charlotte. He gave her the stark truth. I must follow or become the very thing I have hunted for centuries. Dishonor. Forcing his fellow hunters to find and destroy him. He was ancient. Experienced in battle. They would have trouble, and he could as easily kill them as they could him. The idea… He shook his head. I go where you go, sielamet. Always.

“Tariq, we can save her,” Liv reiterated. “I know we can. Emeline knows things. She sent for me. She said you know what to do. We have to band together. One mind. All of us. We can do it.”

“Csecsemõ, she must go through the conversion. It is… difficult. I cannot take away the pain and she is very weak. It is not good for you to be here, to see this.”

Liv stuck her chin out, her fingers wrapped around Val’s hand so tightly they were white. “I know I’m ten. I know that, but I have gifts, and I know what is truth in someone’s mind when I touch them. I know what is in Emeline’s. She sees reality in dreams and she told me. She told me to run and get Val. She said to tell you that you were right to call everyone in even though it feels wrong. She said modesty or bravery isn’t important, just easing the conversion for her. You were right all along in your thinking for the children. She said that all the Carpathians and I needed to connect our minds with yours. Charlie needs to be in the soil, just like you have her. She said, ‘Hold on to her, Tariq.’ And then she said this is how to convert the others and me – all of us together – and you were the one who knew it; you were just afraid of losing any of us, but it has to be done.”

He’d lost control of his woman and she was dying. Now, he’d lost control of his child. Little brave Liv. Ten years old. She could already hear everything on the telepathic common path they all used. She was old beyond her years and far too young for the terrible things that had happened to her. Things he couldn’t prevent.

He had to trust Emeline to know what she was talking about. He had to believe that she would never risk Liv. Never. She was trying to save the child as well as Charlotte, although he would have preferred she come herself or talk to Amelia. He glanced up at Maksim.

Maksim raised an eyebrow, but Blaze nodded several times. “Emeline would never tell Liv to be here if it wasn’t important, Tariq.”

He didn’t understand why Liv had to be a witness, but Charlotte’s body suddenly writhed in his arms and he could think only of saving her. The soil kept her from moving or thrashing, but the wave of pain was so sudden, so intense, he was certain of its own accord her body would have curled into the fetal position. He turned her on her side, his arms holding her against him, the soil packed tightly to hold her fragile body in place while the blood reshaped her organs and got rid of the toxins.

All along, Tariq had been trying to think of a way to aid the children in their conversion. He’d thought of – and discarded – several ideas, but his mind kept returning to the idea of all the Carpathians together aiding the children as the conversion took place. They were far more powerful as a whole. No one had thought to try it.

A male turned his lifemate, and it was a grueling, difficult process, and most females would find it objectionable for any other to see them so vulnerable. Naked, sick, in most cases convulsing. Stripped of all dignity. No woman would want anyone to see her like that and no man would want that for her. Still, the idea, no matter how many times he’d dismissed it, kept coming back to him because it was logical. Together, they were extremely powerful.

Tariq would do anything to spare his woman pain. Even sacrifice her dignity. Now, when her life was at stake, he had no other option. He had to have the others there, and if Emeline had dreamt this was a success because the others were present, then he’d take that flicker of hope and hold on to it.

Pain slammed into Charlotte’s body, nearly crushing her under its weight. He could feel it through her. Excruciating. Robbing her of breath. Of mind. Of focus. For a moment he wavered. How could she take this? How could any of them? A ten-year-old child, let alone a three-year-old.

The chanting swelled in volume and then the others poured into Charlotte through him, a lifeline like no other. Tariq was shouldering as much of the pain as possible for her and surrounding her spirit at the same time to keep her from traveling too far from them. The others took small portions of the pain, bites out of it until there was very little left for Charlotte to bear. Her body writhed and contorted under the onslaught of the conversion, but the soil gently held her along with Tariq. When her body expelled the toxins, the earth quickly absorbed them and whisked them away from her, leaving her clean.

Still, even with the power and coordinated efforts of all the Carpathians present, the healing chants and the unexpected, even shocking boost of Liv, Danny and Amelia, Charlotte continued to fade. They kept pain from her, but the toll on her body from Vadim’s icy safeguard and the presence of the splinter in her body were impossible for them to counteract.

Holding her to him, Tariq realized he had no choice but to do something about that splinter. Vadim might not be able to go after her red blood cells, caged as he was, but the subtle influence was there. That influence was killing her body. She was already slipping away from him. Regardless of the danger, he had to take the chance.

Dragomir, she is still fading. Vadim’s splinter remains within her. I think together we could extract it. I warn you, it will fight us.

He needed Dragomir to know they were in for the fight of their lives. As soon as the cage around the splinter was released, Vadim would do his worst. He would sense his prey was weak and would strike hard with everything he had at his disposal. To rid her body of the splinter in the middle of the conversion was madness, but Tariq had to go with his gut. Emeline had reminded him of that by sending her message through Liv.